A Very Downey Christmas

Here are some pictures from Christmas Morning. Santa brought the girls rawhides and bully sticks, and they acted appropriately (i.e. extraordinarily cute). Here they are when they first tore into them...

...and then I let them outside. It was so warm they decided it would be nice to stay outside, and settled out in the monkey grass. It was absolutely adorable. Our monkey grass is terribly overgrown, but having never had it or really been around it I don't know if I should cut it back or what. I was thinking of leaving it as is for this express purpose, so maybe Bugs will stay out of all the other grand plans I have for the backyard.


Here are some pictures from the big celebration at Bill and Danya's. Unfortunately, my camera batteries were dying as the girls (and Will) were opening their stockings. I know, I'm an amateur. I did manage to get some good candid shots, though, of everyone and sweet Annie.



The Downeys got us, among other things, a wonderful beverage/tea cart. Right now we don't know where we will put it--we have several options--thankfully it has wheels! It looks great with the bromeliad Sonny brought us on it!

And here is my big present from Paul! I would show you what I got him, but it would just look like the Dillard's mens sales paper :) He got me an aerogarden, which is something I never knew my life needed until Tuesday night at Target. This is a smaller version of the larger one, and has three seed pods that are now busy growing English Cottage flowers--phlox, stock and petunia. I'm super excited about it! Depending on how well they work we may get a larger one to have herbs in--you can get them with up to 6 or 7 pods, which would be awesome for herbs and so compact. You can also grow cherry tomatoes and peppers, too! So far it seems fairly easy--it will remind you when you need to water, add a "nutrient tab" or change the grow light, which runs for 17 hours/day and is dark for 7. I am going to set the timer so it will be lit during daylight hours and dark at night, obviously. I will keep you all posted on its progress!

Here is Paul leaping into my picture of it:

Here is the box, which is what I am hoping ours will look like!

...and here is our "lovely assistant" showing off our little setup!

In addition to Paul getting me things I never knew I was missing, my other two presents were this and this. GET OUT OF TOWN! A monkey potato peeler and a travel mug JUST for tea. I have never been so happy... well, at least since the Curves membership earlier in the evening from Danya, the Zola gift certificate from John and Sarah Beth (and Mirror from B&D), and the plates from Mom and Dad last week!

Movie

See the original here.

Wall-Ruff-Downey Christmas 2008

HOSES!

SUNGLASSES THAT TRANSFORM YOU INTO JOE PESCI!

COMPASSES!

 OLD IMARI PLATES!

PIG EARS!

LIMOGES BOXES WITH BORDER COLLIE TOP-SES!

WIVES THAT SHUT UP!

DREMELS!

Stage is set!

Here is the table and bar for tomorrow.

Anatomy of a Party, Pt. 2: The Help

I moved a bed in the corner of the kitchen by the door, since we really rarely use it.
Here are tomorrow's hostesses. Bugs wants to remind everyone that sharing is caring.

Anatomy of a Party, Pt. 1

Today I got some stuff done for the get-together on Saturday. I did a little baking and finished up the flower arrangements.
I baked the Chocolate-Hazelnut Meringue Cookies this afternoon, and they are great! Here is how that ended up...

Here is the finished product, in my new tupperware...

Here is what the mixture looked like after combining the hazelnut and chocolate with the meringue. I tried to use a pastry bag, but that was a pain in the butt. I ended up doing rounded tablespoons and some are larger than others, of course.

Here was the meringue initially...

...and here was the hazelnut, bittersweet and unsweetened chocolates mixture. AKA... heaven. Seriously good stuff. Would make an excellent blizzard :)

Here are the flowers.

This arrangement will go in the bar area, where we will have all the drinks...

These will go where they are now, and I will probably pull the chairs from the table to accommodate more people should they want to sit down. That way, all the food will be on the table and people can get around it more easily, too. I am really proud of these arrangements, so be sure to tell me how awesome they are, OK?

And these are in the guest bathroom.

I had some roses that got their little necks broken on the way back from the store, so I put them on this wreath. Does it look stupid? Be honest. Maybe I can cut them even shorter and just "stick" them in there, as opposed to kind of having them "slid" in there. What do you think?
I am sure I will update more tomorrow. I still have to make the hot nuts and the double chocolate biscotti, as well as clean up the house some. It was kind of icy here today, so it was a little difficult to get motivated...

Tree is up!

Here are some pictures of the tree's "becoming", and of all the help I got from my family, two and four legged. Enjoy! They kind of go from last to first... 

To anticipate some questions and comments: We will be hiding the wires under the TV soon, and we are aware how tacky our tree topper is. We don't know how Bugs fits on the chair. Yes, we would beat her ass if she got on the new chair(s). No, we are not keeping Lana even though she is SO cute. No husbands were harmed in the decorating of this Christmas tree.

More cooking, more house pics...

We hosted Bill and Danya tonight for a small "Thanksgiving" meal. We ordered a small turkey from the Avalon Acres farm in Hohenwald, TN... their website is here. It ended up being delicious, as were the side dishes: squash dressing, apples and sweet potatoes, and green bean bundles with bacon. Banana pudding to top it all off--but I still can't get the meringue to do like Mom's! I just reviewed the pictures and they look terrible so I am NOT going to post them--but rest assured they were awesome! To compensate, here are some pics from the clean house, including Paul's "Winter Wonderland" he's turned our deck into :)

The winter wonderland...

The living room... the unfinished (unstarted) tree, and our "new" old bookcase that was Danya's Great-Grandfather's.

The kitchen... with the fixed table, bromeliads and rosemary.

And the bar area!

...and now for your daily sign of the apocalypse!

No, I'm not talking about this, although that's pretty weird. I'm talking about my clean kitchen. Observe, and weep, ye wannabe-domestic goddesses. I don't want to take any guesses on the over-under of how long this is going to last; but it sure is a good feeling.

Yes, that is a yummy crockpot full of ranch stew. And here is my Amaryllis, that I feel like is really coming along well... it's probably four weeks in.

Weekend Update

Well, this was a pretty uneventful week. I was busy with school stuff so I didn't have a chance to do much. I did manage to make and freeze some sausage balls for our upcoming open house. I have seen blogs in the past that post picture of food, and I figured out my light wasn't right because my mix looked horrible in pictures. I did manage to get a decent picture of the finished product. I like to call this the "missing man" formation ;)
...of course, there were kitchen pests. This is Bugs and Lana, our foster for the time being. She is really doing great. Not too many problems out of her just yet... in fact, I wanted to keep her for the first day, but then she kind of got annoying. Still sweet, but annoying. When you foster you want to keep them all on the first day.

She does this, which is pretty rare for the dogs we've seen. She is super snuggly with Bugs and Bugs tolerates her for the most part. Sometimes she gets sort of snippy with her, but this has happened a couple of times... 

Yard Day

Well, today really felt like we were real live homeowners--albeit still sniffly ones! After church we worked in the yard for a couple of hours. We discovered a very invasive vine growing up the side of the house--a trumpet, or cow-itch vine. Click here for more information on the trumpet vine. Apparently it's beautiful, but it's also grown into the side of our house. Who knows what's going to happen with that. We managed to kill the root and remove what we could, but the stuff in the side of the roof is too high for us to handle.

Here is the vine... in between the roof and the house. We're worried, but at least now we know it is dead. What is really disconcerting is that we didn't notice it before--meaning we (and everyone else who's been here) are not too observant, or the thing grows pretty rapidly. I'm going with the latter, especially with all the horror stories I've read about it over the past day. 

On a brighter (really) note, the maple in the front yard is so beautiful. A few years ago we spent a weekend in Lexington, VA and took a beautiful picture of some foliage against the blue sky. Little did we know that one day we'd have a similar scene. But, of course, those unfortunate Virginians don't have the Channel 4 tower in the background.